Gridlines
by Thanatos Disraeli
Summary: Aria, a young pinball & arcade enthusiast, sees Kevin Flynn, or who she thinks is Kevin Flynn in her dreams. She is pulled to the old arcade that she's always wished to be inside, and is pulled into the Grid by none other that Clu.


_**1**_

**Reflections of a Passing Storm**

A silver thread of conciousness. That was how she felt when she listened to the rain. Perfect. Rhythmic. Pure. The rain always cleansed her palate of thought. She sits, curled up in a patio chair on her back porch, safe under the overhang from the passing droplets of moisture but close enough to feel the chill of the storm and hear the pattern of water on the earth. She wears her scant pijamas, nothing more than a black lace thong and matching bra, her slim form kept toasty under a woven moss throw. _Yes_, she thought to herself, _this is true bliss._ She could not be more content.

But in a world such asa hers, where everything is run of hand-held gadgets and controlled by one evil corporation-ENCOM-such contentedness is hard to find. She savored every second she could.

Aria glanced to the makeshift porch-table that was once a giant spool for copper wire next to her perch and read the newspaper headline for about the billionth time that day;

_"ENCOM Still in Upheaval from Mysterious Dissappearance of CEO Kevin Flynn"_

She sighed heavily ro herself, deep in thought. So much for that one moment of peace. Flynn's sudden dissapearance rode heavily on her mind. She guessed anyone could say that she loved him. It was, however, indeed strange in the circumstances surrounding it. He left no trace of his whearabouts, or any indication of wherehe was going. Strange, indeed.

Aria sighed for about the millionth time, stress fully back and rearing its ugly head. She quickly decided to take a late night-or was it more like early morning?-stroll in an attempt at relaxation she knew would never come anyway. As she readied herself for her walk, she wondered, would anyone raise any eyebrows if she just vanished off the face of the earth? Just like, _poof!_ Gone?

Aria wonders about that a lot these days.

_**2**_

**18 & Life**

Aria takes her time walking around town. She enjoys the black sky, the solitude the unbroken clouds, deserted streets, and the profound lack of humanity in this most late of hours. As she turns down a road leading toward the now-mostly-unincorporated part of town, Doc Marten boots stomping the curb, leather jacket smacking against her bare stomach, chains and zippers jingling (she wasn't wearing much more than her black bra; to lazy to dig for a clean shirt, and who really gives a fuck at this hour?), long brown hair bouncing loosly with each step, gently curling with the light mist in the air, torn jeans hanging limply around her lightly sculpted, long legs, she chided herself for thinking such thoughts. She had more self-preservation than that, didn't she?

Didn't she?

Aria shook her head, as if trying to shake out the thoughts, but in all honest, she really didn't know the answer to that. Sure, at one point she had had people she cared about and in turn cared about her, surrounded her with their lively chatter, their livelyhood even, their souls, but now...now she didn't really know what happened to them. What happened to the good old days. To days filled with light and happiness. Aria let out a soft breath and watched it turn to misty steam in front of her and turned down another familiar street unconciously. She guessed she didn't really know much these days.

Her thoughts turned to the strange dreams she's been having for the past several weeks, since the dissappearence of Flynn. She sees him in her mind. He calls to her, seduces her into his gentle yet powerfully strong caress. He kisses down her neck, whispers words of tenderness into her ear. Truely a lover for all the ages. She felt herself drawn to him more and more, to the old arcade, to his life force. She needed him. Wanted him. Every fiber of her being burned for him whenever her eyes lit upon his face, a picture of perfection. She _burned _for him. Dream Flynn tells her he wants to take her to where he is, to a spectacular place she will never believe until she sees for herself. Wants to make her is lover. The queen of his new realm. Tells her he loves her, that he would never be complete without her. Aria rolls her eyes. Of course it was all a dream. She'd only imagined what it would be like to have him on top of her a million times or so in her late-night wet fantasies that all women have when they're alone and in need of a little TLC. Whatever.

Her reverie was broken when a bright yet somehow dull red neon light filled her field of vision. Aria turned her ultraviolet eyes up toward the light and gasped, shocked. She has walked down here almost every night for the last three years-the same amount of time since Flynn's dissappearance and her recurring sticky dreams of him started-and never had the sign to his ancient arcade been lit. Ever.

But it was tonight.

She looked around, making sure, really sure, that she was alone on this street. A quick glance told her all that she needed to know. After assuring herself she was deserted, Aria climbed over the gate before the main entrance, dropped down on the other side with a muffled _oof!_ and quickly picked the old-style lock with expert skill. When she heard the tumblers click into place, she stood up and stepped back, one hand on her hip, the other pulling her hair out of her face shakily, breath ragged and stone cold in her chest, biting at her lungs like a thousand tiny dimonds. She closed her unforgettable eyes and steadied herself with long, slow, cold breaths. It had Aria's dream for years to see the inside of Flynn's Arcade, the place where it all happened so many years ago, to play all the classic upright games and pinball tables, to truely immerse herself into the classic 80's culture that she so wished she could have lived through herself...but alas.

And now that she was here, now that she had the chance, she was wimping out hardcore. Fucking pussy. Aria mentally smacked herself for showing cowardice at this stage, grabbed the door handle, and wrenched it open. She closed her eyes as she stepped through, not opening them again until she heard the door click shut behind her.

She gasped again as she looked around the small space, taking in every minute detail. The main fluorescent lights overhead were out, but the room was alight anyway with about a hundred telescreens, games ranging from Centipede to Space Paranoids. Aria reveled in it, but didn't bother to look at them closely when she spotted the holy grail of arcade games, the one game that has gone down in local folklore infamy, the one that haunts her dreams as much as Lover Flynn: Tron. She walked straight down the row of games right up to it, and stopped when she was directly in front, hand gripping the cold, soft, well-worn plastc joystick that seemed to her the stickshift into awesomeland.

Her breath caught in her chest again. It felt as if she were touching god's joystick. This was it. This was really it. She fished inside of her jacket and then her jeans pockets for a quarter, finally finding one deep within the unknowns of that weird little crevice in the front right pocket that's not quite a pocket but not quite anything else either. She slid it into the coinslot, palms wet with the sweat of anticipation as she heard the clink inside the coin door. Then in the same hopeful moment the agony of defeat; the quarter dropped from the return slot and onto the bare, dusty cement floor. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes as Aria bent to retrieve the rejected quarter, rejected like she had been most of her mortal life. She had a lot of issues she was still working out.

Aria noticed that the floor under Tron was scuffed to holy hell compared to the rest of the floor. There were circular divuts dug deep into the floor going both left and right. She touched them, a single tear sliding down her cheek and into the deepest of divuts, and as the second attempted to escape the clutches of her lashes, there was a deep rumbling from within the wall behind the game. She stood up ubruptly, just in time to see the whole game come slightly forward and slide to the right, revealing a door-shaped black hole.

Aria hugged herself, mouth agate, shivering with what had just happened before her. A miracle? A freak act of god? A hopeful hallucination? Her gut told her not just to run, but to run as if Satan himself were on her heels in chase. She chewed on her lip, mind heavy with indecision, not sure if she should run away or venture inside the mystery cell before her. Closing her eyes, she tried to concentrate on this most vital descision. She knew in her soul that something big would go down if she went in, that her life as she knew it would be changed forever, but she also hated the monotony and stress of her real life. As she puzzled out her predicament, a voice suddenly popped into her mind, cold and inviting all at once, and immediatley recognizable. It was Flynn. He gave her a mental, wordless, soundless push deep within her psyche, making her unconciously walk forward into the dark unknown.

Aria finally came to when she heard the door/arcade game slide shut. No going back now from what she could see. Startled, confused, and unable to remember the events of the last three seconds it took to walk in here, she opened her eyes unwillingly and looked around the dimly lit room. It was a simple office, well, simple in Flynn's terms. There was the symbolic slate-black touchscreen desk that she had seen him sit before in just about every early publication expose on him, a meager shelf of books full of classical authors like Dante Aligheri and Jules Vern, and behind the desk several feet away, there was a strange contraption that looks like a futuristic gun. Aria shrugged off the urge to claw her way out of the cement cell and sat down carefully at the desk. She touched the smooth glass surface, to which it instantly came to life.

Still had power.

Aria quickly typed WHERE IS FLYNN into the dialouge box. The cursor blinked for a second, then spat out the message HE IS IN THE GRID and some unintelligable binary. She blinked, confused. Grid? What was the Grid? She asked the computer. It replied after a second, I AM THE GRID with more binary code attatched. Aria frowned. That helped her a great lot. Whatever. She sighed, closing her eyes for only a second before bright blue flashing lit up her eyelids. She re-awoke to the real world just in time to see binary code flash lightning fast across the touchscreen, then another dialouge box appeared that said APETURE CLEAR? with options to click yes or no. Aria had no clue what that meant, so she looked around her, shrugged, and clicked yes.

As Aria was flung backwards into a blinding blue-white light, the last thing she saw of the material world was a flashing, malicious blue message across Flynn's ancient desk:

END OF LINE.

_**3**_

**All On The Street Of Dreams**

Aria landed heavily back into the same leather chair she was just thrown out of. She looked around quickly, breathing hard, heart beating as if she had just run a marathon. Yep, still the same office space she was just in, minus the strange lazer-gun-eye thing behind her. Wait...where was the music from the jukebox and the noises from the game systems? Why was everything so damn quiet? She gets up to inspect the sliding door from whence she came through, applied a little pressure to it, and stepped back as it opened up on its own accord.

She stood, opened-mouthed in the threshold of the secret door, staring at all the same games she just saw not ten minutes ago, but all off, and tinged with a weird blue neon hue. Not believing her eyes, thinking that this is all part of a new dream, she walked out the main entrance that she so lovingly picked to get into, and stood awestruck yet again.

The street she had walked on so many nights in a row had changed to a pitch-black slate simmilar to Flynn's desk, with hexagons boardered with blue neon strips, like a sci-fi beehive. The buildings were of the same type of obsidian slate the streets were made of, with random blue, yellow-orange, or red neon strips running along the sides of them. She didn't understand. Where was she? Why was it so dark? There were clouds, but no rain! Not even any wind or cold. Was she in Hell? Did something explode in Flynn's office sending her right to Hades? Can that even be possible?

A flash of movement caught her eye. She turned, saw a human-like figure sprinting down the deserted, dark road, and decided to follow. Maybe it will lead her to civilization. She chased after him for about three city blocks before coming to a complete and skidding stop. The figure-now seen to be male-was staring straight up at a giant machine made of the same strange black obsidian metal, and outlined with bright red neon strips.

A giant Space Paranoid.

Aria stood, quivering, as still as the male figure before her. Shocked, once again, for the third or fourth time tonight. Probably more than that. Aria watched as the top part of the giant ship slid down to the ground, and as people dressed in skin-tight black and red neon suits with black glass helmets deployed from it. It was impossible to tell if the black-dressed people were men or women, good or bad. Aria felt her stomach turn.

The black-dressed people approached the figure she chased, looked him up and down, then one said 'Rectify', and the figure proceeded to scream his fucking head off. Ear-splitting, the sound made Aris's head want to rip in half. She covered her ears trying to block the sound out, but nothing doing. The male figure ran in the other direction of the black-clad things, screaming 'ERASE ME ERASE ME!' as the things ran after him, reaching to their backs for a glowing disc, pouncing on the male figure and forcing the discs into the male's face. He shattered into a thousand little square pieces, as if he were made of saf-T-glass. Aria didn't know she was screaming herself until the things looked at her. She did the first thing that came to her head and ran. Just plain bolted in the opposite direction as the things and the ship.

She heard them run after her, making her adrenaline surge, forcing her legs to move faster. Nothing doing, though; they quickly caught up to her, one grabbing her upper arms, the other running around to face her. Aria faced the helmetted thing, looking at it dead center where the eyes would be, spat on it, and kicked it in the proverbial balls, granted it had any balls to kick. It staggered away, the other one trying to keep a hold on her while she struggled to break free, planting her elbow into it's sternum. The one she kicked dropped to the ground in front of her, so she reared her leg back and kicked it in the stomach as hard as she could. It huffed painfully, and the one holding her put it's knee in her back, making all struggling incredibly difficult to do. She struggled against it anyway, wiggling around like a fish freshly caught and slapped on a boat deck. The hold on her loosened, so Aria took the opportunity to run like Hell away, leaving the two things breathless and behind her. She was having a hard time processing the information in front of her. She thought she was going insane.

Footsteps behind her again, this time more than the original two. _Fuck_, she thought to herself, _these assholes just don't quit!_ They caught up to her yet again, this time with three holding her, two standing in front of her, and the original two walking calmly toward her. The one she kicked in the stomach and balls smacked her across the face, the one she escaped from punching her in the stomach, making her retch uncontrollably. They continued to abuse her as such for several minutes, alternately punching, kicking, slapping, and generally abusing her. The one that she kicked smacked her so hard across the face that the ones holding her lost their grip and she fell to the ground. Hard. Aria landed with a loud _oof!_, trying to catch her breath, still being kicked in the side by at least one of them. They pick her up again, and the one kicking her-she can now identify him by the spots of red neon as opposed to the lines of the others-smacked her across the face.

He continues to do this until a voice calls from somewhere behind them.

"Stop, Program. What the hell do you think you are doing?"

Aria went cold. She recognized that voice...but it couldn't be...could it? No. Impossible. Wishful thinking.

The...program thing that was beating on her didn't stop. The footfalls of the voice grew closer. She thought it was getting mad.

"RINZLER! HALT!"

The program thing froze mid-smack, his hand floating in the air just inches in front of her face. All the others surrounding her stood stiff as toy soldiers.

The footsteps grew closer still.

"Drop her."

The programs holding her obliged, and Aria yet again went tumbling down toward the obsidian earth. She panted heavily, taking full advantage of this new opportunity to regain her breath. She also felt a sickly wet drip off of her lip. Probably blood. Great.

The footsteps came to a halt, black boots with yellow-orange neon slightly to the left of her face.

"Look at me, Program."

Aria kept her face down, cold sweat breaking out over her from the proximity of the voice.

A short pause, then, more forcefully, "Look at me."

She did not.

Finally the voice could be patient no longer. "LOOK AT ME, PROGRAM!"

Aria was startled by the loudness, and looked up to face the source of the voice. She felt a chill pass through her very soul. Flynn? Was it truely him? Aria couldn't believe her eyes.

They stared at eachother for a second. He eyed her hungrily, like a starving animal at a piece of flesh. Aria could hold back no longer. "Flynn? Is that really you?" Her whisper was barely audible.

At that moment, the drop of blood resting on her lip finally decided to fall to the ground. Flynn's eyes grew as big as dinner plates as they followed it to the obsidian surface. He looked back up at her face, caught her eyes, and smiled widely. The other programs surrounding them all gasped and took a step back from her.

"A User." He said, more to himself than anyone. "How interesting."

A strange little man with a weird-looking mohawk stepped out from behind Flynn. "What shall we do with her? The Games, perhaps?"

Flynn answered without turning to him, eyes only for Aria. "No, Jarvis. Take her to my quarters. I'll deal with her from there."

The weird little man nodded. Flynn closed the distance between them and offered his hand to Aria. She took it, chills threatening to overtake her entire nervous system. His grip was strong, yet somehow soft and inviting. He pulled her back to her feet easily, looked her up and down one more time, then caressed her bleeding lip, wiping away the trail the droplet left with his black glove.

Face just inches away from hers now, he spoke so softly so only she could hear, "I've been waiting for you, Aria. I'm very glad to see you." His breath was so warm on her skin.

As she struggled for words, he nodded to someone behind her, then felt a sting on the back of her neck. He smiled, showing perfect white teeth, "And one more thing," He said to her, much louder this time, a sneer in his voice, "I'm not Kevin Flynn." As the world went black, the last thing she remembered was the feeling of complete defeat, horror, and fear for herself and her future as she fell into the Not-Flynn look-alike's arms.

_**4**_

**Fear of the Other**

Aria awoke from a restless, dreamless sleep, stomach burning, head on fire, and various parts of her face and torso throbbing in perfect time with her heartbeat. Se refused to open her eyes at first, hoping that the events of the past few hours were behind her, were all a dream, just some strange trip into Wonderland. She so wanted to be asleep, outside in her patio chair, rain falling all around her in the darkling hours of early morning, cold seeping under her moss throw and into her bare skin, but the throbbing of her face and ribcage is what made this fantasy fade away, her eyes flash open.

She lay flat on her back on top of a bed, soft as it was, it was not her own. The material felt like some sort of silk. It was smooth and slippery like silk, but somehow rough at the same time. Flat black, reflecting only the slightest bit of blue from its inky depths. The ceiling she was staring at was the same black hexagon glass-stuff-thing that made up the rest of this hellish place, outlined with yellow-orange strips of neon instead of the blue-white that seemed to be everywhere else. She sat up, cradling her head in one hand, supporting herself with the other behind her.

The room was rather spartan, containing only a simple couch, also black with orange-yellow neon, a desk, a dining table, some cabinets that dominated an entire wall filled with what looked like operation manuals of some sort, and a control console that looked simmilar to a giant mixing board in a recording studio. The wall opposite her, which the bed faced, was not a wall at all but an enormus window roughly the length of her entire house back in whatever the hell reality she fell from, and about as tall as the two-story mammoth. It overlooked what seemed to be a whole city, black outlined in neon blue-white, with an eternal dusk above it. Aria got the sense that she just went down the rabbit hole, took the blue pill, lost her fuckin' mind somewhere along the line. She had never been so awestruck in her life. To her left was a small door, opened slightly to what looked like a bathroom. As she forced her sore and battered muscles to move toward the bathroom, an epiphany struck her; she may never get back to her reality, her world, her normal life as she knew it. All gone. She was gone. Had no idea how she was going to get back, if she could at all.

Tears threatened to spill down her cheeks as she remembered that the man who had been calling to her in her dreams was not Flynn at all but some imposter of this land. Flynn was here, yes, but just where she didn't know. Aria doubted that the imposter would tell her. The hot tears flowed down in spite of her tempered control, as she realized that the man she had been dream-fucking was the imposter too. God, she felt so used! So damn dirty! She needed a shower. Now.

As Aria planted her feet on the smooth, cold floor, she realized that her Doc Martens were missing. As was her leather jacket. She runs a frustrated hand through her tangled, blood-matted locks. When will the madness end? Finally making her legs move, she limps over to the small half-opened door, pushes it open all the way, and finds that her suspicions were confirmed. It was indeed a bathroom, jet-black facets gently lit with soft blue-white strips instead of the oddly incandescent yellow-orange that was sure to give her a headache eventually. Aria strips off her bra, ripped jeans, and black thong in the doorway, leaves them there, limps the twenty or so feet to the weird-looking bathtub, took a few fumbling seconds to figure out the water spout through a new onslaught of tears and fresh pain from the movement, pulled the curtain back, and let the hot water cascade down her broken body. She watched as the strangely luminescent blue water turn a dull rust red with her blood as it washed down the drain. Whatever. At least the water was hot. She let the tears come easier now, feeling safer to let them mix with the water than risk being seen by anyone. Aria hates letting other people see her cry. Even weird alternate-reality creeps.

She was so into her shower that Aria didn't even notice the figure that came and collected her discarded clothes, then laid out a clean set of lingere simmilar to the one she came with, along with a fresh towel, then left the bathroom, still leaving the door open as she had it.

Aria finished what was essentially rinsing her body and hair, for she couldn't seem to find any sort of soap or bodywash or even shampoo in, near, or around the shower. She stepped out from behind the curtain, and finds the towel, bra, and thong that wasn't hers. She grabs the towel and dries herself, then wraps her hair up in it for maximum dryness, cautiously looking around before slipping on the new lingere. It was black like her other set, and made of the same slick material that covered the bed. There was one simple stripe of glowing neon yellow-orange down the side of the right cup of the bra, and down the front right of the thong. She was suprised as hell that whoever laid out the items got her size right, but then she remembered that her jacket and coveted Doc Martens were missing, and got less suprised and more depressed.

She looked around for a hairbrush of some sort, was not suprised that she didn't find one, let her hair down anyway and ran her fingers through it instead. Aria tossed the towel to the side, letting it lay on the floor next to the tub, seeing no other alternative, and walked back into the bedroom-sitting room-dining room area. Sitting back down on the bed, noting how nice the slippery material felt on her bare ass, still running her fingers through her hair, she didn't hear the soft footfalls behind her. Aria was far to wrapped up in herself to notice anything short of a bomb going off in front of her. She was also pondering why there were no mirrors in future-neon-world.

All of a sudden there were hands on her shoulders, rubbing them gently. Her back instantly went stiff, eyes wide, face contorted in fright, as a soft whisper touched her ear. "You look lovely in my design, Aria, then again I'm sure you'd look beautiful in just about anything."

Aria's eyes widened as she jumped off the bed and whirled around, ready to strike out in a crouch stance as she stared down the Flynn imposter.

"Who are you and what did you do to Flynn?" She practically screamed at him, voice thick with anxiety and hysteria, eyes wide and wild.

He sat there calmly, a smile on his smooth face, his cold, calculating eyes holding firm on her own wide ultraviolets.

As he laced his hands, he spoke steadily, "I am Clu. Flynn created me to create the perfect system. Flynn is among the Grid, but just where I cannot say. My old friend has decided to go off the map, as it were." He looked at her expectantly, gauging her reaction to his words.

Aria shook her head. She didn't understand what he was talking about. She felt as if she had followed the white rabbit, taken the blue pill, crossed over, utterly loosing her damn mind! She gripped her temples tightly, feeling a migraine coming on, trying to comprehend this new reality.

Clu got up and covered her hands in his own, forcing her head up to look at him. "Perhaps you're not understanding me. You're here to stay. You're mine. I drew you here. I spoke words of love to you. I held you close on those nights where you thought you were alone in that horrid world you're from. I saved you from all that, and now you're going to help me save this one."

Aria looked up into his eyes and glared hard, throwing his hands off her face and slapping him with as much force as she could muster, biting deeply into her lip as she did so. His head flew to the side with the impact of her fury. Aria hoped it split his lip. Despite the anger she felt, it also pained her to slap him so.

He raised his head slowly, anger flashing dangerously behind his eyes. He looked at her steadily, a small smirk in his face, tasting her fear, and pinned her to the wall before Aria had time to react. She struggled against his grip, Clu's fingers clutching her hair tightly in an aggressive fist. He pinned the rest of her body down with his own, pressing her hard in place.

Aria couldn't help but feel her body burn at the pressure of his on top of her. His breathing heavy, she felt his moist breath on her face, wishing against all reason that she could feel it on her neck, down her chest, on the inside of her thighs...

No.

She had to focus.

Now was the time to fight, to wish away all girlish fantasies. This man, this _program_, this fake Flynn had seduced her, had tricked her, had brought her here under false pretenses. He was not Flynn, no matter how alike they might have been. His words were expertly woven lies, his caresses, song to lure her to the rocks of her death. Clu is a bastard for all the ages, a true asshole, and yet she still felt like she did when she dreamed of him not so long ago.

She shook herself, tried to clear the haze over her eyes. Focused. She had to get out of this somehow.

Aria struggled against Clu's hold on her, and in response he tightened his grip on her body. Her whole body relaxed at the increased pressure of him against her, rendering her struggles useless. Clu knew her resolve was weakening, so he became more aggressive in his approrach, practically smashing her against the black and neon yellow wall.

He unzipped the front of his latex suit, exposing the soft grey under armor that provided padding, which also resembled futuristic bubble wrap, but much much softer. He pressed his chest against hers, Aria's cheek laying softly against his coller and her forehead leaning into his strong fleshy neck. His warmth trickled over her, his musculature more defined underneath his black armor. Aria breathed in his scent, sickly sweet and musky with the slightest hint of electronic ozone. It drove her wild.

Clu released some of the pressure he held on Aria and wrapped his arms around her waist, his fingers trailing lightly down her lower back and resting just abover her ass. She melted into him despite herself. He was so warm. Aria lost all sense of herself at that moment and gave into him completely.

The tight fists she didn't know she was holding against his shoulders softend and caressed his face, cradled it, and rested her head in the hollow of his neck, his warm flesh pressed against her cheek.

He loosend the grip oh her hair slightly and stroked her cheek with a free hand. "Won't you stay, if not for me then for your own selfish reasons? You know you can't resist me for long."

His seductive voice rumbled from deep withing his chest and rang in her skull like a shattering crystal goblet deep underground.


End file.
